History

Historical background

Asia in 600 AD, showing the location
of the Karluk tribes.

The first Chinese reference to the Karluks (644 AD) labels them
with a Manichaean attribute: Lion
Karluks (Shi-Gelolu, shi stands for Sogd.
"lion"). The "lion" (Tr. "arslan") Karluks persisted up to the time
of the Mongols . In the Early Middle Age,
organized as the Uch-Karluks (Three Karluks) union, composed of
Karluks, Chigils, and Yagma tribes, they were members of the Turkic Kaganate. After the split of the
Kaganate around 600 into the Western and Eastern Kaganates, the
Uch-Karluks remained in the Western Turkic Kaganate under a
non-autonomous home rule, as the members of the five Tele (Dingling) tribes that did not receive
autonomy: the Karluks; the Yagma (Yan Nyan);
the Kipchaks; the Basmyls; and the Hun (Dulu)
tribes Chue, Chumi, and Shato. After the
breakup of the Western Turkic Kaganate around 630, the Karluk union
became independent, and by the year 665 it was led by a former
Uch-Karluk bey with the title Kül-Erkin, now titled "Yabgu" (prince), who had a powerful army. The Karluk vanguard
left the Altai
region, and at the beginning of the 8th century reached
the banks of the Amu
Darya.W. Barthold, "Four Studies In History Of Central
Asia", Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1962, pp.87-92

The Karluks were a branch of the Turkic Türgesh, or aboriginal Altaians. In 650 AD, at the time
of their submission to the Chinese, the Karluks
had 3 tribes: Meulo, Chjisy (Popou), and Tashili. On paper,
the Karluk divisions received Chinese names as Chinese provinces,
and their leaders received Chinese state titles. Later, the Karluks
spread from the valley of the river Kerlyk along the Irtysh River in the western part of the Altay to beyond the
Black
Irtysh, Tarbagatai, and towards
the Tien
Shan. .

In 630 AD the Aru-Kagan (Chinese, Helu) of the Eastern
Turkic Kaganate was captured by the
Chinese, and his heir apparent, the "lesser Khan" Khubo, with a
major part of the people and 30,000 members of the army, escaped to
Altai, conquered the Karluks in the west, the Kyrgyz in the north,
and took the title Ichju Chebi Khan. The Karluks allied with the
Dingling and their leaders the Uygurs
against the Turkic Kaganate, and participated in enthroning the
victorious head of the Uygurs
(Tokuz Oguzes). After that, a smaller
part of the Karluks joined the Uygurs, and settled in the Bogdo-Ola
mountains in Mongolia, and the
larger part settled in the area between Altai and the eastern Tien
Shan.

The Karluk rose in rebellion in against the Türküt, then the dominant tribal
confederation in the region, in about 745, and established a new
tribal confederation with the Turkic Uygur and Basmyl
tribes.

In 766,
after they overran the Turgesh in Jeti-su, the Karluk
tribes formed a Khanate under the rule of a
Yabgu (prince). Famed for their woven carpets in the
pre-Muslim era, they were considered a vassal state by the Tang Dynasty after the final conquest of the
Transoxania regions by the Chinese around 744. They remained in the
Chinese sphere of influence and an active participant in fighting
the Muslim expansion into the area, up until their split from the
Tang at the Battle of Talas in 751.

Chinese intervention in the affairs of Western Turkestan ceased
after their defeat in 751 by the Arab general
Ziyad ibn Salih. The Arabs dislodged the Karluks from Fergana. In
766, the Karluks occupied Suyab, and
transferred their capital there. By that time the bulk of the tribe had
left the Altai, and the
supremacy in the Jeti-su passed to
the Karluks. Their ruler bore the title Yabgu, and is often
mentioned in the Orkhon inscriptions. In
Pehlevi texts one of the Karluk
rulers of Tocharistan was called
Yabbu-Hakan (Yabgu-Kagan)
. The fall of the Western Turkic Kaganate left the Jeti-su in the
possession of the Turkic peoples, unconquered by either the Arabs
or Chinese.

The Karluks were hunters, nomadic herdsmen, and agriculturists.
They settled in the countryside and in the cities, which were
centered around trading posts along the caravan roads. The Karluks
inherited a vast multi-ethnic region, whose diverse population was
not much different from its rulers. The Jeti-su was populated by
the Turkic Türgesh, who were divided into
two tribes, the Tukhshi and the Azes (Ases) mentioned in the Orkhon
inscriptions, the remnants of the Turkic Oguzes whose main body had moved to the west,
becoming the Shato Turks (i.e. "Steppe
Turks"), and interspersed with the Sogdian
colonies. The southern part of the Jeti-su was
occupied by the Yagma people, a branch of the
Tokuz-Oguzes, the later Uygurs, who also held Kashgar. In the north and west lived Kangars (Kangly, Kangüy, Kangju). A separate
significant division of the Karluks were the Chigils, a tribe that had detached from the Karluk.
They
resided around Issyk
Kul.

The diverse population adhered to a spectrum of religious beliefs.
The Karluks and the majority of the Turkic population professed
Tengrianism, called by the proselytizing
religions shamanism and heathen. Chigils were Christians of the Nestorian denomination. The majority of the
Tokuz-Oguz, with their khan, were Manicheans, but there were also Christians,
Buddhists and Muslims among them. The peaceful penetration of
Muslim culture through commercial relations played a far more
important role in the conversion of the Türks than the Muslim arms.
The merchants were followed by missionaries of various creeds,
including Nestorian Christians. Many Turkestan towns had Christian
churches. The Türks held sacred the Qastek pass mountains,
believing to be an abode of the deity. Each creed carried its
script, resulting in a variety of used scripts, including Türkic runiform, Sogdian, Syriac, and later
Uygur. Karluks had adopted and
developed the Turkic literary language of Khoresm, established in
the Bukhara and Samarkand, which after Mongol conquest became known
as Chagatai Turki.

Of all Turkic peoples, Karluk were the most open to the influence
of the Muslim culture. Yaqubi
reported the conversion of the Karluk-yabgu to Islam under Caliph
Mahdi (775-785), and by the tenth century several towns to the east
of Talas had cathedral mosques. Muslim culture had affected the
general way of life of the Karluks .

In the following three centuries the Karluk Yabgu state occupied a
key position on the choice international trade route, fighting off
mostly Türkic competing encroachers to retain their prime position.
Their biggest adversaries were Kangars in the north-west and
Tokuz-Oguzes in the south-east, with a period of Samanid raids to
Jeti-su in the 840-894. But even in the heyday of the Karluk Yabgu
state, parts of its domains was in the hands of the Tokuz-Oguzes,
and later under Kyrgyz and Khitan control, increasing the ethnical,
religious, and political diversity.W. Barthold, "Four Studies In
History Of Central Asia", Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1962,
pp.92-102

Kyrgyz period

Prior to
the Kyrgyz-Uygur war of 829-840, the Kyrgyz
lived in the upper basin of the Yenisey River. Linguistically their language, together
with the Altai language, belongs to a separate Kyrgyz group of the
Türkic linguistic family. At that time they had an estimated
population of 250,000 and an army of 50,000. Kyrgyz victory in the
war brought them to the Karluk door. They captured
Tuva, Altai, a part of
Dzungaria, and reached Kashgar.Allied with the Karluks against the
Tokuz-Oguz Uygurs, in the 840s the Kyrgyz started the occupation of
that part of the Jeti-su which is
their present home. Karluk independence ended around 840.
They fell from dominating the tribal association to a subordinate
position. The Kyrgyz remained a power in the Jeti-su until their
destruction by the Kidanes in 924, when
most of them evacuated from their center in Tuva back to the
Minusinsk depression, leaving the Karluks to predominate again in
the Jeti-su.

The position of the Karluk state, based on rich Jeti-su cities,
remained strong, despite the failures in wars in the beginning of
the 9th century. Yabgu was enriched by profitable trade in
Turkic slaves on Syr-Darya slave markets, selling guards for the
Abbasid Caliphs, and control over the transit road to China in the
sector from Taraz to Issyk Kul.The Karluk position in Fergana, despite Arab attempts to expel them, became
stronger .

The fall of the last Kagan of the Turkic Kaganate with its capital in Ötüken, which dominated for three
centuries, created a completely new geopolitical situation in all
Turkic Central Asia. For the first time in three hundred years, the
powerful center of authority that created opportunities for
expansion or even existence of any state in Turkestan had finally disappeared. Henceforth, the
Turkic tribes recognized only the high status of the clan that
inherited the Kagan title, but never again his unifying authority.
Several Muslim historians state that after the loss by Uygurs of
their power (840), the supreme authority among the Turkic tribes
passed to the Karluk leaders. Connection with the clan Ashina, the ruling clan of the Turkic Kaganate,
allowed the Karluk dynasty to dress their authority with legitimate
attire, and, abandoning the old title Yabgu, to take on the new
title of Kagan.

Karakhanid period

Towards
940 the "heathen” Yagma from the southern
border seized the Chu valley and the Karluk
capital Balasagun. The Yagma ruler bore the title Bogra-khan
(Camel Khan), very common among Karakhanids. The Yagma quickly
proceeded to take control of all Karluk lands. In the tenth and
twelfth centuries, the lands on both sides of the principal chain
of the Tian
Shan were united under the rule of the Karakhanid
Ilek-khans (Khans of the Land) or simply Karakhanids (Great Khans). The
Karakhanid state was divided into fiefs which soon became
independent. .

The Kara-Khanid Khanate was
founded in the 10th century by Satuk, a Turkic convert to Islam.
His son Musa made Islam a state religion in 960. The empire occupied
modern northern Iran and parts of
Central Asia. This region remained under Karakhanid (and for
varying periods Seljuk and Kara-Khitan) control until 1206, when it
became a Mongol vassal state. It remained an
independent vassal until the Mongol invasion
of 1221.

Control of Turkestan

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Khitan period

In the
beginning of the tenth century AD a Mongolic tribe Khitay,
also spelled variously Kidan], Kitan, Qidan, etc., with admixture
of Mongols, founded a vast empire,
stretching from the Pacific to Lake
Baikal and the Tian
Shan, displacing the Türkic population and replacing it
with Mongol population. The language of Khitay is taken
nowadays to be a strongly palatalized Mongolian dialect.
Reportedly, the first Gurkhan professed the Manichaean religion.
Owing to
its long sway over China, the ruling
dynasty, which Chinese dynastic
histories call Liao (916-1125), was
strongly influenced by the Chinese culture. In the 1125
another Tunguz people, the Jurchen,
allied with Southern Chinese dynasty Sung,
ended the domination of the Khitay. The Khitay exiles, headed by
Ye-lü Ta-shih, a member of the Khitay royal family, migrated to the
West . Khitay settled in Tarbagatai area east of the Jeti-su, their
number grew to 40,000 tents. Around 1130es the local Karakhanid
ruler of Balasagun asked for their aid against the hostile Turkic
tribes Kangly and Karluks. The Khitay occupied
Balasaghun, expelled the weak Karakhanid ruler, and founded their
own state which stretched from the Enisey to Talas.Then they conquered Kangly, subdued Eastern
Turkestan, in the 1137 near Khojand defeated the Transoxanian Turkestan ruler
Mahmud-khan, and in the 1141 defeated the army of the Seljuk Sultan
Sanjar. The western Khitay state became known under its
Türkic name Kara-Khitay (Black, Western, or Great Khitay), and
their ruler bore the Türkic title of Gurkhan (Khan’s son-in law) .
The original Uch- Karluk confederation became split between the
Karakhanid state in the west and the Karakhitay state in the east,
which lasted until the Mongolian time. Both in the west and east,
Karluk principalities retained their autonomous status and
indigenous rulers, though in the Karakhitay the Karluk khan, like
the ruler of Samarqand, was forced to follow the Karakhitay Chinese
denigrative protocol to acquiesce in the presence of a permanent
representative of the Gurkhan .

Directly, the Gurkhans administered limited territories, populated
in the 1170es by 84,500 families under direct rule, the Gurkhan's
headquarters was called Khosun-ordu (lit. "Strong Ordu"), or Khoto
("House"). The Karluk capital was Kayalik. The Karakhanids
continued to rule over Transoxania and Eastern Turkestan. Juvayni stresses the oppression of the
Karakhitay in comparison with the Karluk times. Islam was forced
out of its dominant position to equal the other cults, which took
advantage of the new freedom to increase the number of their
adherents. The NestorianPatriarch Elias III (1176-1190) founded a
metropoly in Kashghar. The Karakhitay
metropolitan bore the title of "Metropolitan of Kashghar and
Navakat", showing that the see of Kashghar also controlled the
southern part of the Jeti-su. The oldest Nestorian tombs in the Tokmak and Pishpek
cemeteries go back to the epoch of Karakhitay domination. The
Karakhitay Muslim vassals raised in rebellion, initially
successfully quashed by the government. The situation changed
when the most powerful Western-Mongolian Nayman tribe,
headed by Küchlük (lit.“Little”), a son of the last Nayman khan
east of the Karakhitay empire, were ousted (towards 1209) from
Mongolia by Chingiz-khan.
The Nayman Nestorian Christian Küchlük seized the power in the name
of Gurkhan, but soon, in the 1211, a Mongol detachment under the
command of Khubilai noyon, one of
Chingiz-khan's generals, appeared in
the northern part of the Jeti-su. Arslan-khan Karluk killed the
Karakhitay governor of Kayalik and proclaimed his loyalty to
Chingiz-khan. The Jeti-su, together with Eastern Turkestan,
voluntarily surrendered to the Mongols..

Mongol era

In the 1211 a Mongol detachment under command of Khubilay noyan, one of Chingiz-khan's generals, appeared in the
northern part of the Jeti-su. Arslan (Tr. "lion") Khan Karluk
(probably the son of Arslan-khan and brother of Mamdu-khan) killed
the Khitan governor of Kayalik and proclaimed his loyalty to
Chingiz-khan . The "Collection of Annals" records that Chingiz Khan
removed from the Karluk Arslan Khan his title, "Let your name be
Sartaktai", i.e. Sart, said the sovereign . After the absorption
of the Karakhanid state by the Chagatai
Khanate, the ethnonym Karluk became
rarely used, although a certain Muslim group during the Yuan Dynasty in Turpan was labeled
Kara-Hui. The KarlukTurkic
language was the primary basis for the later lingua-franca of the
Chagatai Khanate and Central Asia
under the Timurid Khanate. It is
therefore designated by linguists and historians as the Chagatai Turkic language. But its
contemporaries such as Timur-Lenk or
Babur, simply called it Turki.

Social organization

The state of Karluk Yabgu was an association of semi-independent
districts and cities, each equipped with its own militia. The
biggest was the capital Suyab which could turn
out 20,000 warriors, among other districts the town of Begliligh
had 10,000 warriors, Panjikat could turn out 8,000 warriors, town
of Barskhan 6,000 warriors, town of Yar 3,000 warriors. The titles
of the petty rulers were Qutegin of the Karluk Laban clan in the
Karminkat city, Taksin in the city Jil, Tabin-Barskhan in the city
Barskhan, Turkic Yindl-Tegin and Sogdian Badan-Sangu in the
Beglilig town. The prince of the capital Suyab, situated north of
the Chu river in the Türgesh land, was a brother of one of the
(Gok)Turkic khans, but bore a Persian title Yalan-shah, i.e. "King
of Heroes".

Muslim authors describe in detail the trade route from Western Asia
to China across the Jeti-su, and mention many cities, a few of them
bore double names, Turkic and Sogdian. In addition to the capital
cities of Balasagun, Suyab, and Kayalik, in which Rubruquis for the first time saw in the Muslim
town the Buddhists who had three temples, the geographers mention
towns Taraz (Talas, Auliya-ata), Navakat (now Kara-bulak), Atbash
(now Koshoy-Kurgan ruins), Issyk-kul, Barskhan, Panjikat, Akhsikat,
Beglilig, Almalik, Jul, Yar, Ton, Panchul, and others .

Dynastic relations

Etymology

The most ancient reference to the etymology of the Karluk name is
recorded in the Chinese dynastic history Tang-shu, which names Karluks as
Ko-lo-lu and traces the name to the word Karlik
(Turkic "snow piles"). Kar is "snow", as in the name of
the Kar Sea. N.Aristov noted the river Kerlyk, a tributary of the
river Charysh, proposing the tribal name
originating from the toponym with a Turkic meaning "wild millet" .
A reverse is equally possible, the toponyms named after an ethnonym
of the native people. Another version cites the homonym of the
Karluk valley in Altai. The derivation of Karluk from
Kara (Turkic "Great", "Western", "black") is considered to
be philologically impossible, and incompatible with the well
documented Arabic form of the ethnonym "Halluh".